Unleash the Power of the Female Brain

Unleash the Power of the Female Brain: Supercharging Yours for Better Health, Energy, Mood, Focuas and Sex by Daniel G. Amen, M.D.     Audio Book: 12 hours, 13 minutes    Hardback Book:  416 pages

Having grown up in a home with a mother and five sisters,  Dr. Amen has observed many amazing differences in the way that women perceive the world both as it pertains to them and how they relate to the outside world.    In his clinical studies of the brain later in life he developed a program specifically for women that points out the stuff in life that is bad for our brains and makes us foggy minded, sluggish, prone to foul moods, etc. that will make women and men (if they are open minded enough to try his program),  healthier, more energetic, more engaged in their home, work and social lives, more involved romantically and sexually with their partners, help reduce weight and body mass, improve sleep and relaxation reduce stress and relieve anxiety.   Sign me up.   All that Dr. Amen relates is doable and easy to follow.   He inspires his readers/listeners to want to be take better care of their brains for longevity and it can be done in 3 simple steps.   Eat better and choose to avoid caffeinated drinks, Sleep more - no less than 7 hours per night and preferably 8-9 hours for maximum benefit and meditate daily and as often as you can to calm your senses and by being more rested you will be better able to cope with the multiple stresses that arise throughout any given 24 hour period.   He gives such great advice that I want to run out and buy every grocery item he recommends.   He also goes into the use of healthy supplements what they do, what they are and how best you can use them for maximum benefit.   This is a great book that is very user friendly.    He offers such terrific insight that I would recommend this book to middle-schoolers on up so kids can learn early how best to treat their brains throughout their lives to avoid Alzheimers, dementia, wrinkles and more that while associated by mainstream media with growing older they do not have to be a part of our lives if we follow his simple way to be good to our brains and therefore our bodies.   GREAT  BOOK.  Any one at any age can learn from this book and undo the damage we don't even realize we are doing to ourselves: 0 high cholesterol, Diabetes, veins that turn brittle and break or fill with plaque to the point of stroke and worse.   Wonderful tips on brain health.   I highly recommend this one.

The 6 Keys: Unlock Your Genetic Potential for Ageless Strength, Health, and Beauty

The  6 Keys: Unlock Your Genetic Potential for Ageless Strength, Health, and Beauty by Jillian Michaels with Myatt Murphy      AudioBook:   7 hours, 18 mins.      Hardback Book:  304 pages    

I like the way Jillian Michaels talks.   No B.S. just straight talk and she consults neurophysists and speaks the lingo like a pro.    She breaks down a lot of heady stuff about our genetic makeup and all the myriad of things going on in our bodies at any given time, from cell structure on up.   She is a great teacher and while some of her lessons at the first of the book were straight out of a medical classroom 101, it was such engrossing information I had to play it back if I missed something or felt I didn’t quite get it.    She makes me laugh or at least smile at her seasoning of f-bombs here and there to express her point but it just keeps it real and makes the learning feel a little gangsta and very cool to know.   She talks about the 6 age inciters which is what the title – the 6 keys - is all about.   They are:  metabolism; damaged macromolecules; epigenetics; inflammation; stress adaptation and telomeres.   She gives you the background on all of those “keys,” and explains how our bodies don’t have to age if we pay close attention to where we land on the 6 keys and how well we treat our bodies with special attention and care to eat well and do preventative maintenance on ourselves to be sure our keys are in the best shape they can be.      Being mindful at all times ever vigilant  to eat right, to exercise at least 30 minutes a day 7 days a week, drink half our weight or more of water every day to stay hydrated and lubricated,  she gives the reader guidelines and helps with the caveat that yeah you don’t have to give up pizza nor birthday cake for the rest of your life, but just get back on track the next day after you binge on that stuff and get back with the program.   She takes a lot of heavy info and breaks it down into understandable chunks so the reader isn’t bombarded then left to go WTF?  Oops, that was a quote from Jillian.   She gives you tips and tricks to keep mindful of how to grow your telomeres, those little endcaps on our DNA strands very necessary and just because they shrink due to poor diet and lack of exercise once we get on the wagon and start treating our body well again, the damage can be fixed and improved in a very short time and she tells us how.    She talks about how smoke and carbon monoxcide really do a number on us and how we can repair the damage done.   She talks about how meditation can ease the mind and reduce stress she also promotes getting a pet she personally is more of a dog person and how said pet can reduce stress by just being in your home.   She also recommends giving a forever home to a shelter animal.   Doing a good thing for them and for yourself.  People with pets suffer less from stress, less from asthma and loads of other maladies.  She addresses healing the mind, the body, watching what you put into your body to keep it running at top performance no matter what your age,  she disagrees with the many diets out there and promotes eating grass fed meat rather than corn or other feed, she recommends having fun because denial of fun for yourself can lead to a sedentary life which can lead to less social interaction and finally none which can lead to depression and there are too many fun things to keep busy with so no reason to get in such a state.   Delightful explanations.   She talks about fad diets and what they play to within us and why they don’t work ie. once you stop following said fad diet – you balloon right back up to where you were  before.   Jillian’s no nonsense but fun way of coming across is entertaining but also you get what she is saying.   It is not hard it is just doing it.   Very good book.   Now I want to read her book on Metabolism.   I would recommend this book highly to anyone interesting in arresting the age process, getting your body to the point where you have elasticity instead of feeling stove u[ all the time.   Well done, Jillian Michaels.      

 - Shirley J

The Longevity Code

The Longevity Code:  Secrets to Living Well for Longer From the Front Lines of Science by Kris Verburgh, MD        Audio Book:  11 hours, 56 mins.    Hardback Book:  320 pages    

Most excellent book!   So understandable, written in a very down-to-earth fashion.   Lofty topics broken down into laymens terms.   It is brilliant, seriously.   I am so glad to have so many new wrinkles in my brain from all the stuff learned here.   Many parts are so good you will want to re-read or re-listen to because you will want to remember the information.   The book’s point is the first person that will be able  to live to 135 years of age has been born, medical and nutritional information is advancing so rapidly that the author suggests it might be possible the first person to live to 150 years of age and still be vibrant and well looking like a 30-40 year old.    The author discusses findings and break-throughs already known and soon to be available that will change mankind’s existence.  He likens it to the diverse immense changes that arrived on the scene during the Industrial Age and says life-saving and prolonging techniques are near ready to hit the market.    There is even a procedure being tested that might sound a little vampirey swapping old blood for new blood to revitalize the body and keep the skin elastic like the youthful skin of a 20 year old.    The experiment is a little creepy that the author describes but they are working on implementing less invasive procedures as they learn more and more about how the body right down to the DNA and beyond produces all the things it takes to keep a body well and working like a champion.    Fascinating stuff here.    I highly recommend this one.

How To Make Disease Disappear

How To Make Disease Disappear by Dr. Rangan Chatterjee            Audiobook: 5 ½ hours    Hardback Book:  240 pages            

GREAT BOOK!   Dr. Chatterjee does what he calls a 360 degree approach to the complete healing of a person.   He searches for the root causes of his patients maladies because it is his belief that many conditions can be healed through diet – could you be reacting to an allergy to certain things you are eating and may have been eating for years without realizing your symptoms are from your diet not necessarily  a chronic medical condition whereas changing your food intake can take away the issue that has troubled you.    He also checks his patients’ sleep patterns.    Are you waking up refreshed or are you feeling as though you have to force yourself out of bed?   Do you have too much technological equipment in your bedroom that is causing your biorhythm to be off kilter?   He suggests using red night lights if you need one instead of the white led lights as the red light is easier on your brain to process because even a tiny night light can signal your mind to remain wakeful.    He says one’s bedroom needs to be completely dark to rest the mind the way it functions best to relax and let go into the sleep state.    So much excellent informative information here.     He is passionate about lifestyle and nutrition being a person’s first-line not jumping on the pharmacological bandwagon that sadly many doctors use as their go-to.    More pills are not the answer Dr. Chatterjee says, that is not a right nor normal existence.    Most things can be treated in the gut by moving the body more to help with digestion and proper expulsion of waste and feeding the body properly by giving it real food not processed food.    Dr. Chatterjees thoughts on processed food is that it is the cause of many of the diseases, aches, pains, pre-mature aging, skin eruptures, high-blood pressure, strawlike hair, rampant Type 2 Diabetes when there is no prior family history of it and the sedentary lifestyle plaguing the U.S. and all western following cultures who now experience many of the same problems found in the U.S. high rates of cancers, heart disease and more.   Dr. Chatterjee finds that drugs only suppress problems they seldom cure them.    Keeping patients on a lifetime regiment of drugs is not helping them.    He has done trials with many patients over the years taking them off drugs and getting them to sleep more in rooms free of televisions, computers, etc. and darkening their bedroom with blackout windowshades to make the room completely dark which signals the mind to rest and sleep.  He works with patients on their nutrition finding when symptoms begin and what stops them when taken out of their diet?    Dr.  Chatterjee has found that most medical issues can be prevented or miraculously cured by changing our lifestyles.      He finds many health issues are stress related and stress comes from lack of taking time out to relax but hitting it hard 60-80 hours a week without rest relentlessly driving ourselves as if in a race.    We end up depleting ourselves and for what?     If we kill ourselves working too hard for too many hours then stress about everything at home so we alienate our loved ones what have we gained.   Not a happy life because it is lived in stress and frustration.   Time to live well to be well to be well to stay well and enjoy life.    This book is so good I plan to listen to it again to remember this down to earth user friendly doctoral approach to teaching us to re-think what we are doing to ourselves and switch to doing for ourselves rather than to ourselves.   MOST EXCELLENT BOOK.   Should be required reading for the planet.      Good on you, Dr. Chatterjee.    Thanks for healing the whole person.

Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer

Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer by Barbara Ehrenreich     256 pages

"A razor-sharp polemic which offers an entirely new understanding of our bodies, ourselves, and our place in the universe, Natural Causes describes how we over-prepare and worry way too much about what is inevitable. One by one, Ehrenreich topples the shibboleths that guide our attempts to live a long, healthy life — from the importance of preventive medical screenings to the concepts of wellness and mindfulness, from dietary fads to fitness culture."

That's the publisher's blurb about this book.  I had read other books by this author and found them thought-provoking, so I had been anticipating this new book from her.  I didn't love it.  I found it was a strong starter, but then I started losing interest about halfway through.  I kept reading, but it just wasn't capturing me the way I had hoped. I still found some of the book to be thought-provoking, though, so it wasn't a total loss.  The author begins by focusing on the mysterious tendency of human immune cells to promote deadly cancers. From there, she explores how people feel that we like to believe we have agency over our own bodies and minds . . . but actually not.

The Big 5

The Big 5: Five Simple Things You Can Do To Live a Longer, Healthier Life by Dr. Sanjiv Chopra with David Fisher          Audio Book: 5hours, 41 minutes   Hardback Book:  224 pages     

Yes, the author is the brother of Deepak Chopra.    He points out his findings on how to improve your life, your health, your metabolism virtually everything by implementing these 5 things in your daily routine:   Meditate 15 to 30 minutes daily whether that means being in a religious meditation or tuning into your own breathing and letting your mind rest from all the daily stress - it will tune you in to your most calm self.    He says if you can mediate twice daily like he does, you will be in an even better place.    Take Vitamin D3 supplements as American tend not to get enough sunshine in their lives so his recommendation is go out into the free sunshine and soak up all those delicious rejuvenating rays of pure Vitamin D or if that is not your favorite thing to do, then go for Vitamin D3 supplements.   He says Vitamin D is good but Vitamin D3 is like turbo charging your system.   Exercise at least 30 minutes 4 times a week though every day is even better,  and last but not least – Eat Nuts.    Any kind of nuts.   Peanuts, cashews, pecans, walnuts, almonds, pistachios – if it is a nut it is going to do good things to your body.     He said often diet gurus will tell you if you are hungry to eat a handful of nuts – and this is why – nuts contain the good fat your body needs, not the transfat in a bag of chips or cookies, etc.   Also, nuts are like little engines that will rev your energy level once you eat them.    A natural energy boost.    And number 5 is in the Big 5 is drink coffee daily.    I know, it’s like Whaaaaat?    Coffee is o.k.?    Not only that, but he recommends up to 6 cups a day.    He goes in to all the great attributes of coffee and how it helps the body fight the major cancers,  Breast, liver, pancreatic, etc.    He cites examples from world-wide studies done over the years and builds a very convincing case for his theories though he has been laughed at over the years by various colleagues for promoting free cures (sunshine, etc.) rather than pharmaceutical ones.   There are some truly amazing findings to be considered here.  Dr. Chopra says these five things especially when done together will keep you mentally, spiritually and physically in tip top shape and help you to be able to focus, to de-stress, to feel better in general and to be able to take all this good feeling from home to work then home again and still be feeling at your optimum level and if you do it right, none of it is going to cost you much at all– sunshine is free, walking is free, meditating is free, o.k. you have to buy the coffee and nuts but that is still cheaper than buying pharmaceuticals.    As an extra bonus he adds toward the end of the book that the reader should take an aspirin a day if your system can tolerate it or at least carry one with you at all times in case of a medical emergency such as a heart attack.   Aspirin thins the blood keeping it from clotting so that blood clots can’t form, break off lodge in your brain and cause massive strokes/heart attacks and possibly death.    He didn’t add it to the Big 5 because some people are allergic to aspirin or their systems just cannot tolerate taking lysergic acid diethylamide (aspirin).   For some individuals depending on your biological makeup aspirin could prove hazardous, but, he recommends checking with your doctor to find if it is doable for you – he thinks aspirin is a real miracle cure in its life saving properties.    Very good book.  

Ageproof

Ageproof: Living Longer Without Running Out of Money or Breaking a Hip by Jean Chatzky and Michael F. Roizen     Audio Book:  12 hours, 30 minutes     Hardback Book:  352 pages 


This is the first book that I have read that ties a person’s health and their finances together for an overall healing of both for a better life.    There are so many laser pinpoint truths the reader will find here.    If your finances are out of whack, if you have lost control of the things you owe, if shopping over exceeds your income – your financial health is bad.   If you aren’t taking good care of your body, if you aren’t exercising and monitoring what you are putting into your body  and you stuff it with a lot of feel good but bad for your health foods (transfats, empty calories, too much sugar, starch and the wrong kind of fats) you are going to gain weight, feel sluggish, and lose control over your health.    Financial expert,  Jean Chatzky brings excellent financial advice throughout the book and Dr. Micheal Roizen,   the Chief Wellness Officer at the Cleveland Clinic offers terrific tips to improve your life through taking care of your health in order to stay focused and clear minded, feel energized naturally and by the way, he is pro coffee, and he even teaches on how decluttering can affect your life, your health and even help you get a handle on your finances.    Great book.   Very inspiring while remaining very down to earth and readable and better yet, doable.   I really like the way these three topics were brought together to improve life in a total makeover comprehensive kind of way.  I have always seen the connection between these 3 areas in life and I was very happy to find a book that addressed all those issues as being equal parts that when made right bring about the best life we can hope for.    Standing ovation for this one.    Bravo, Jean Chatzky and Micheal F. Roizen.    The American embodiment of the principles of Feng Shui and yin and yang – balancing our lives brings balance with all that is us and all that we can become for our better and the betterment we can bring to not just our world but to the world.    Excellent work.

Head Strong

Head Strong by Dave Asprey                Audio book: 10 hours, 41 mins    Hardback Book:  352 pages                                         

Dave Asprey plans to live to be 180 years old and says it is totally realistic to believe he can by following biohacks to upgrade his brain power and his total overall body fitness and health and it all is done through food.   Dave is one of the tech savvy Silicon Valley guys hired as a teenage computer hacker now he is following up by bio hacking his body to find the perfect hack for his own and all people’s biology.    He explains how in two weeks anyone can boost their brain power to work faster to get out of that morning fog to think clearly and to have thoughts rapid firing through all those neurons in our heads.   Not only that but he explains how people can save themselves from what he calls kryptonite – the stuff that zaps our bodies just like kryptonite depletes Superman of his strength and life force.     He talks a lot about mitochondria – the cellular level engines we can supercharge to gain precise focus, eliminate cravings and turbo charge the way we feel and go through life instead of slogging along on the S.A.D. (standard American diet) we do now.   He tells how to eliminate mood swings, temper tantrums and malaise.    And all this great buzz can last from when you begin to carry you to a healthier far later age than currently thought possible (he cites the oldest person known to have lived to 256 with documented proof.)   He says there is no reason Alzheimers has to happen to anyone.   Joint pain, arthritis, osteoporosis does not have to happen to people if they heed his findings through neuroscience basically learning how your brain actually works and adapting lifestyle modifications to aid the brain instead of harming it like we currently do.   He offers solutions for everyone from neurobiology.   He also cites environmental poisons that affect our brains and how we can eliminate this factor from destroying our brains and bodies by causing inflammation in our cells that we until now have not recognized as inflammation.     He basically tells you how to hotwire your brain by telling what to eat what foods to avoid and how to give your body a detox through the proper kind of physical activity, meditation, proper breathing techniques even to how to enhance your home environment through simple adjustments in lighting and in your work space to enhance brain activity.    He is the author of two other books on the subject and I am impressed enough with his ideas to check those out, too.    He does go a bit extreme at times but it is because he has done his research and found what works.    An enlightening read.

The Longevity Plan

The Longevity Plan: Seven Life-Transforming Lessons from Ancient China  by Dr. John D. Day and Jane Ann Day with Matthew LaPlante            Audio Book: 7 hours, 46 minutes       Hardback Book: 304 pages        

Dr. Day is a renowned heart cardiologist who received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins and who completed his residency and fellowships in cardiovascular medicine and cardiac electrophysiology at Standford University.    Dr. Day was schooled in and was of a mind that as the body ages, deterioration and disease were a part of the natural aging process.   He prescribed his patients medicine for heart ailments that in the scheme of things were all actually preventable.    He too suffered from overweight, insomnia, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and degenerative joint disease.    It left him with a tinge of melancholia knowing as a doctor and particularly as a heart surgeon he should be living and eating differently than he was but he told himself given his schedule it was just easier to grab whatever was at hand to eat – the sugary goodies always available at the hospital or the pizza or other junk food on the way to or from work.    Exercise was as non-existent in his routine as was eating a healthy meal.    Family time didn’t fare much better as he was always tired when he was at home.    While delivering a lecture at a medical conference in China he heard about a village where Diabetes, Cancer, Heart Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, High Blood Pressure etc. were non-existent.   Not only that but that many of the residents in this remote mountain village were over the age of 100 years old!   He couldn’t believe it could be true but he was curious to find out.    He made the trek to Bama what many Chinese people called Longevity Village.    A place high in the mountains in north eastern China about 20 miles from the border of Viet Nam.   The doctor spoke Mandarin which enabled him to communicate with the people there.   He was introduced to several inhabitants that looked to be elderly who were either out working in the fields, some were practicing Kung Fu, or lifting things and moving with such agility he couldn’t believe they were doing it.   He was really floored when he learned that many were 100 years old or older and had living children in their 80s!   These people were clear minded and great storytellers.    He offered to help one woman who was lifting furniture onto a cart and she told him, ‘oh no, doctor, you might hurt yourself!  I’m used to this.     Another time he had been helping a centenarian work in her field harvesting crops.    She had filled a bag very full and hoisted it onto her back and started to walk back to the village.    He insisted on carrying it for her but when she sat it down he couldn’t pick it up!   It took all he had to hoist it up on his shoulder and struggle to get it back.   The lady offerered to take it back from him and he asked her how could she carry such a heavy load and at her age?   She said she was used to it she had been doing it all her life, why would she stop now?   He met this answer with all of the hard chores and work the centenarians did there.    They always answered I’ve been doing it all my life why should I stop now?    On one of his visits one of the 100+ ladies had taken a fall and was in a wheelchair for a year.    The next time he was back she was up walking and working in the field.     He asked her how she felt and she answered “Like I could fight an army!’  And proceeded to skip away like a young girl and do a Kung Fu routine down the road kicking her legs up and throwing punches.   The doctor thought there must be some special something that made these folks this way like superhumans able to carry on long beyond what the rest of the world could.    He found no disease, no hypertension and observed their diet which consisted of all they wanted to eat at every meal but he noted they ate no dairy though they had water buffalo and could have drank that milk or used it in recipes.   When he asked if they ever drank it or used it in cooking they said, “No, why would we?   It would make us sick!”   Somebody knew something there that the rest of the world didn’t.    He said they ate meat but only a couple of times a week.    They ate pigs and chickens and fish.    One man quoted an old Chinese proverb saying,  “the Chinese eat anything with 2 legs except people and anything with 4 legs except a chair.”   They used spices and herbs, ate a lot of legumes, nuts and seeds, particularly pumpkin seeds, vegetables, fruit and meat as they had available the thing missing from their diets was dairy and processed foods that are so prevalent in the Standard American Diet (SAD).   They also used no oil in their cooking and didn’t know why anyone would.    The village at the time the doctor began visiting was rural with no electricity so no t.v.    People got about 12 hours of sleep per night because without electricity they found no reason to stay up much beyond sundown.   They had no gastric problems and no insomnia and went to sleep soon after laying down.      The doctor was so amazed by all he observed that when home he tried to follow the villagers’ precepts.    It was a marvel!   The doctor dropped 40 pounds following the eating pattern he learned from the villagers – no processed food, no dairy, by going to bed earlier and getting 12 hours of sleep instead of the 5 or less hours he had been sleeping each night if he were lucky, he found himself changing for the good.    He felt better, he lost weight, he wasn’t pushing himself on a caffeine based diet – the villagers only drank water from the river so the doctor stopped drinking anything but water and with the diet change, no chocolate nor caffeine drinks hyping him up and a more restful schedule he began to transform into a healthier man even getting in exercise at last and making time for his family by not pushing a go-go-go schedule of work only.   He felt better, he looked better, he was better health-wise.     He asked some of his patients if they would like to try the new plan and 92% of those who began it are still on it.   He calls it the Longevity Plan rather than a diet because diet has such negativity of denial attached to it and on this food plan you can eat as much as you want just avoid dairy, caffeine and processed food (Oh man!   That’s almost everything in the American menu!  Sorry Vegans, but, we are bombarded with processed everything and fed to bursting on hidden corn [starches that turn into sugars] and wheat [whey that more people than realize it are allergic to].      Really good book.   I loved the doctor’s and his family’s visits to the village and the wisdom of the elders when they told their stories or reacted to things the doctor asked them about.   A  worthy read for anyone wishing to do their body good.

Parasite

Parasite by Mira Grant, 504 pages 

This was another one of the books that was forcefully suggested by that coworker/potential blogger person. Upon reading the inside cover flap I admitted that it was something that interested me.

Basically in the future no one gets sick or worries about any type of illness or viruses etc. because they have all been implanted with a form of tapeworm that fights off everything. No more allergies to dogs or pollen, no more getting the flu, or managing blood sugar levels, it does everything and more. That is until something goes horribly wrong.

Parasite really takes a look at what could happen if medicine goes too far. It also takes a glance at what science is willing to risk to make money in the corporate world. The book is very well done, and despite getting very scientific in spots, is easy enough to follow. While I don’t know if this is part of a series yet or not, the author does offer some suggested reading in the same subject area that seem interesting.